| The purpose of this study was to examine the transfer of teaching strategies from a professional development workshop to the classroom using study groups. An additional purpose was to determine the relationship between preferred teacher learning styles and the effectiveness of study groups.;Study groups were defined as a collaborative group of teachers who come together at regularly scheduled meetings with a structured format, to discuss and assist each other in the implementation of new skills.;Fifty-seven participants, teachers in grades K--6 representing 14 study groups within one suburban school district in Pennsylvania, contributed data for this study. The data were analyzed at both the group and the individual level. Transfer of skills, strategies, and knowledge was measured through a pretest-posttest design using a self-reported Innovation Configuration (Hall, Wallace, and Dossett, 1973). Participants completed a Learning Style Inventory (Kolb, 1999) to determine 1 of 4 individual learning styles: accommodating, diverging, converging and assimilating. Group learning style representativeness was calculated for each group. A Study Group Participant Questionnaire, semi-structured participant interviews, and facilitator interviews were used to determine factors relative to 4 categories: group management and structure, group resources and technical support, group dynamics and interpersonal relationships, and group outcomes addressing the functioning of study groups. Regression analysis, ANCOVA, MANOVA, and semi-structured interviews were used to analyze the quantitative and qualitative data. Five research questions guided the investigation.;Findings provided evidence that all 14 study groups made significant transfer of skills from the workshop to the classroom at the 95% confidence level.;Observations of the learning style data found that divergent learners had the highest mean transfer of skills and accommodators had the lowest mean transfer of skills but this relationship was not significant. However, at the 90% confidence level, data indicated that assimilators experienced a larger transfer of skills than their counterparts with other learning styles when they had the most room for improvement.;No significant relationships were found between both group learning style representativeness and transfer of skills, and any of the 4 study group functions, nor between individual learning style and study group functions. |
